It frequently happens that while high wages are given to the workmen in one manufacture, those in another are obliged to content themselves with bare subsistence.The one is in an advancing state, and has, therefore, a continual demand for new bands: the other is in a declining state, and the superabundance of hands is continually increasing.Those two manufactures may sometimes be in the same town, and sometimes in the same neighbourhood, without being able to lend the least assistance to one another.The Statute of Apprenticeship may oppose it in the one case, and both that and an exclusive corporation in the other.In many different manufactures, however, the operations are so much alike, that the workmen could easily change trades with one another, if those absurd laws did not hinder them.The arts of weaving plain linen and plain silk, for example, are almost entirely the same.That of weaving plain woollen is somewhat different; but the difference is so insignificant that either a linen or a silk weaver might become a tolerable work in a very few days.If any of those three capital manufactures, therefore, were decaying, the workmen might find a resource in one of the other two which was in a more prosperous condition;and their wages would neither rise too high in the thriving, nor sink too low in the decaying manufacture.The linen manufacture indeed is, in England, by a particular statute, open to everybody; but as it is not much cultivated through the greater part of the country, it can afford no general resource to the workmen of other decaying manufactures, who, wherever the Statute of Apprenticeship takes place, have no other choice but either to come upon the parish, or to work as common labourers, for which, by their habits, they are much worse qualified than for any sort of manufacture that bears any resemblance to their own.They generally, therefore, choose to come upon the parish.
Whatever obstructs the free circulation of labour from one employment to another obstructs that of stock likewise; the quantity of stock which can be employed in any branch of business depending very much upon that of the labour which can be employed in it.Corporation laws, however, give less obstruction to the free circulation of stock from one place to another than to that of labour.It is everywhere much easier for a wealthy merchant to obtain the privilege of trading in a town corporate, than for a poor artificer to obtain that of working in it.
The obstruction which corporation laws give to the free circulation of labour is common, I believe, to every part of Europe.That which is given to it by the Poor Laws is, so far as I know, peculiar to England.It consists in the difficulty which a poor man finds in obtaining a settlement, or even in being allowed to exercise his industry in any parish but that to which he belongs.It is the labour of artificers and manufacturers only of which the free circulation is obstructed by corporation laws.
The difficulty of obtaining settlements obstructs even that of common labour.It may be worth while to give some account of the rise, progress, and present state of this disorder, the greatest perhaps of any in the police of England.
When by the destruction of monasteries the poor had been deprived of the charity of those religious houses, after some other ineffectual attempts for their relief, it was enacted by the 43rd of Elizabeth, c.2, that every parish should be bound to provide for its own poor; and that overseers of the poor should be annually appointed, who, with the churchwardens, should raise by a parish rate competent sums for this purpose.
By this statute the necessity of providing for their own poor was indispensably imposed upon every parish.Who were to be considered as the poor of each parish became, therefore, a question of some importance.This question, after some variation, was at last determined by the 13th and 14th of Charles II when it was enacted, that forty days' undisturbed residence should gain any person a settlement in any parish; but that within that time it should be lawful for two justices of the peace, upon complaint made by the churchwardens or overseers of the poor, to remove any new inhabitant to the parish where he was last legally settled;unless he either rented a tenement of ten pounds a year, or could give such security for the discharge of the parish where he was then living, as those justices should judge sufficient.
Some frauds, it is said, were committed in consequence of this statute; parish officers sometimes bribing their own poor to go clandestinely to another parish, and by keeping themselves concealed for forty days to gain a settlement there, to the discharge of that to which they properly belonged.It was enacted, therefore, by the 1st of James II that the forty days'
undisturbed residence of any person necessary to gain a settlement should be accounted only from the time of his delivering notice in writing, of the place of his abode and the number of his family, to one of the churchwardens or overseers of the parish where he came to dwell.
But parish officers, it seems, were not always more honest with regard to their own, than they had been with regard to other parishes, and sometimes connived at such intrusions, receiving the notice, and taking no proper steps in consequence of it.As every person in a parish, therefore, was supposed to have an interest to prevent as much as possible their being burdened by such intruders, it was further enacted by the 3rd of William IIIthat the forty days' residence should be accounted only from the publication of such notice in writing on Sunday in the church, immediately after divine service.